We are requesting support for an international symposium on "Respiratory Muscles and Their Neuromotor Control" to be held at the UCLA Conference Center during July 1986. The program of this symposium has been officially ratified as a satellite meeting of the triennial congress of the International Union of Physiological Sciences to be held in Vancouver, British Columbia. This Symposium has three major aims: 1) To bring together researchers who are using various approaches to study the neural control of breathing muscles. 2) To critically review recent advances in the major areas of respiratory neuromotor control. 3) To define important areas for future research and to encourage increased collaboration between the diverse research approaches used to study respiratory muscles and their neuromotor control. No previous symposium has focused on the neuromotor control of breathing muscles. An understanding of this neural control is important since many diseases can affect the control of ventilatory muscles at various levels. Therefore, the proposed symposium is timely and should provide an important forum for basic researchers and clinicians to interact and share information.